WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Monday that prisoners who were convicted by non-unanimous juries before the high court barred the practice a year ago don't need to be retried.
The justices ruled 6-3 along conservative-liberal lines that prisoners whose cases had concluded before the justices' 2020 ruling shouldn't benefit from it.
The decision affects prisoners who were convicted in Louisiana and Oregon as well as the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, the few places that had allowed criminal convictions based on divided jury votes.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the conservative majority that the court's “well-settled retroactivity doctrine” led to the conclusion that the decision doesn't apply retroactively.